Government broke promise to improve UK fitness after 2012 Olympics, report says | Olympic Games

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He was meant to inspire a generation and leave a legacy of a healthier, more active population. Yet promises that the London 2012 Olympics would boost sporting participation have not been delivered, according to a new parliamentary report.

A lasting legacy of participation has been a key part of governments’ discourse for the 8.8 billion Olympic and Paralympic Games, including promises to increase the number of adults taking part in sporting activities. However, the cross-party public accounts committee said the promised benefits had not materialized, with the proportion of adults participating in sport at least once a week actually declining in the first three years after the Games.

He also accused Sport England, the body responsible for increasing attendance, of not knowing the destination of two-thirds of 1.5 billion in grants it has paid out in pursuit of increased sporting activity, a claim challenged by the organization.

The government changed course in 2015, focusing on local approaches to increasing participation and focusing on the less active. It was, indeed, a concession that it had relied too heavily on the Games to deliver higher turnouts. However, the committee concluded that the change in course had still not resulted in a significant increase in national participation rates.

In one of his most concerning findings, he said that of the 1.5 billion in grants given out by Sport England since 2016, the body doesn’t know where 450 million went while the proportion of working adults hasn’t. only increased by 1.2 percentage points from 2016 to 2019.

The committee concluded that, despite spending £323million a year since 2015, the Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport and Sport England had made little progress in tackling inequalities and barriers to the participation.

Almost two in five adults in England do not meet chief medical officers’ guidelines for recommended activities, he said. These state that, each week, adults should complete at least two and a half hours of moderate-intensity activity, such as walking or cycling, or 75 minutes of vigorous-intensity activity, such as running.

Meg Hillier, Labor chair of the committee, who is also MP for the borough of Hackney in east London, blamed a lack of vision and drive. After the short-term financial boost, there was very little to show as a legacy, even in my immediate area of ​​east London where the 2012 Games were held, he said. she declared.

Sport England pushed back against the report, arguing that activity levels were at record highs before the pandemic. He said he knew which organizations had spent his grant money and on what, and was working with them to understand the geographic distribution of the funds.

A spokesperson said: Our annual active living data recently confirmed that, despite the huge disruption of the past two years, participation in sport and activity continues to recover, with children’s activity already back to pre-pandemic levels.

A government spokesperson said: Youth activity levels are now back to pre-pandemic levels and we continue to work with Sport England to invest in sport for all, having recently announced 320 million for schools and more than 260 million to build or improve thousands of bases. facilities.

We will shortly publish a new sports strategy setting out our ambition to continue to increase activity rates and will respond to the committees’ report in due course.

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